


what a delightful thing it is

by Jedi Buttercup (jedibuttercup)



Category: The Unknown Ajax - Georgette Heyer
Genre: Flirting, Multi, Post-Canon, Pre-Threesome, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:21:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25125361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/pseuds/Jedi%20Buttercup
Summary: Anthea hadn't taken Vincent's half-hinted declaration, all those weeks ago, any more seriously than she had Hugo's first frivolous claim that he would offer her the moon.
Relationships: Anthea Darracott/Hugo Darracott
Comments: 14
Kudos: 35
Collections: Little Black Dress Exchange 2020





	what a delightful thing it is

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertVixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertVixen/gifts).



> Title's from a quote in the book, Anthea teasing Hugo about teasing her about teasing him, in entertainingly recursive fashion. :)

The problem with Vincent, Anthea realised with some bemusement a few days after Claud and Richmond departed for town, was that he was far too much like all the other surviving Darracotts of their generation. She had been used to think all the men of her family detestable, and had perceived in her sardonic cousin the same odious habits that had so often led her uncle Granville, her cousin Oliver, and far too many of her other male relations into the suds.

She had thought Vincent's opinion of her largely indifferent, as well; familiar enough for good conversation, perhaps, but otherwise much the same as he felt for Richmond: appreciative of the attention when no better entertainment was in the offing, but too much in love with himself to ever truly put anyone else's concerns above his own.

Trust Hugo to turn that conviction on its ear, as much as he had everything else at Darracott Place since his advent. Anthea observed the pair of them emerging from the old wing of the house, dirty enough to horrify their valets as to the state of their linen, and reflected that she had never seen Vincent in better spirits than she had in the past week.

To think that all that time her featherheaded Mama had been animadverting about Vincent's influence on Richmond, she had seen their similarities more clearly than Anthea herself! Forced to hang upon his grandfather's sleeve, full of reckless intrepidity, and always bent on some form of entertainment, the both of them. Her brother at eighteen was not yet self-possessed enough to draw the wool over her eyes with any consistency, but she'd still been in the school-room when Vincent was eighteen, and it had taken her an unpardonably long time to see through _his_ viper-tongued adult defences.

"Hail the conquering heroes," she said in some amusement as they approached. Hugo's short, curling brown locks and Vincent's darker hair were both so powdered grey with dust as to make their shared features stand out all the more; stood side by side, in evident amity with each other, stripped to their shirtsleeves and damp from their work, they made a very striking pair of book-ends. Hugo was the taller, of course, and his blue eyes twinkled all amusement at her approach; but the gleam in Vincent's gaze was no less appreciative. "I trust your exertions have been successful?"

"All's well that ends well," Hugo agreed amiably, dusting his palms against one another. "There'll be no more footfalls in the night, nor need to worry about run cargos in _that_ passage."

"It seems a shame," she admitted, shaking her head as she glanced to Vincent again, "to have blocked it up after all the time we spent searching for it as children, but I suppose needs must. Did you at least find any hint of the bones of our ancestor's victims we were always so convinced lurked in need of decent burial?"

"Not so much as a lost digit," Vincent denied, smiling wryly. "If ever they existed outside of Claud's fervent imagination, then Spurstow or his ilk no doubt disposed of them long ago, lest they discompose their fellow free-traders as badly as the supposed ghost of Jane Darracott did Ottershaw's dragoons."

"A sad hit to the ancestors' reputation," Anthea replied lightly, clucking her tongue.

"Yes, quite the missed opportunity – as common a failing among Darracotts, I am beginning to find, as the stubborn inclination to go our own way," he agreed, tone just sardonic enough to leave no doubt as to his meaning.

Anthea hadn't taken Vincent's half-hinted declaration, all those weeks ago, any more seriously than she had Hugo's first frivolous claim that he would offer her the moon. To jokingly declaim that if she'd been meek and dutiful enough to acquiesce to Lord Darracott's scheme that she agree to marry his new heir sight-unseen, that Vincent should feel constrained to marry her himself! Was it any wonder that she had mistaken his ensuing jealousy, once she _did_ warm up to Hugo, as mere resentfulness over being displaced by an unknown outsider?

Even the muttonhead everyone had initially believed Hugo to be would have been given pause by the look in his eye _now_ , when there seemed no better chance of his suit's succeeding than when she had teased him for not giving her the opportunity to refuse him properly. Nevermind that his coming through for Richmond and developing friendship with Hugo had forced her to reconsider much of what she knew of him in a fonder light than in times past; her honour was pledged, now.

But Hugo had a way of looking at the world as if determined to seize on each moment's joys; and she saw a bit of that sparkle in the way he smirked at Vincent now. The same way he often smirked at _her_. He'd find a way to set everyone to rights, no doubt, and find his own pleasure in the doing. And why should that not be her pleasure, too?

"Happen you might still find them after all, one of these days, as we haven't blocked it up completely. Crossed it with a few timbers, 'til the Preventives have stopped keeping a close eye. But if we're to settle in the Dower House while the old lord's still above ground, seemed better nor like to have a way in and out without crossing the lawn under the boggard's eye."

"Whisker," she teased him, tilting her chin up speakingly; but the thought pleased her, and she could see it amused Vincent, too.

"Well, I know when I'm not wanted; I'm off to submit myself to Crimplesham's mercies," he said, bending to knock some of the excessive dust from his boots.

"Never say _unwanted_ ," Anthea objected, shaking her head at him.

"Surplus to requirements, then," he replied, lifting a satirical eyebrow. "Unless you feel some particular need for a chaperone at just this moment, in which case, Ajax, I think I might start scouting for the nearest cliff-edge...."

Hugo chuckled cheerily and nudged him with an elbow. "Go on then, if that's the way it is with you."

Vincent snorted, but went, gaze lingering on Anthea's face as he turned a corner.

Anthea waited until she was certain he was out of earshot, then propped her hands on her hips and pursed her mouth. "Of all the things to tease me over, never a word about _that_! Well?"

"Greedy," Hugo accused her, still smiling as he closed the distance between them further.

Heedless of the dust, she reached up, framing his face with her hands as he leaned down for a welcoming kiss. "Mmm. I wouldn't say greedy; charitable, perhaps?"

"The Darracott of Darracott among the lot of us, and me the weaver's brat; pity _I'm_ the one with the half-million pound fortune, or I've no doubt he'd have offered for you long since. And why you shouldn't have taken him up on it, I've no notion."

She bit her lip on a giggle. "The same reason I didn't take him up on it _without_ the fortune, no doubt. It required your presence to cast him in his best lights. Pity he can't have offered for you instead, or Grandpapa might have proposed the two of _you_ wed to bind up Uncle Matthew's wounded expectations."

"And a fine fratch _that_ would have been; he'd no doubt have taken the order just as well as you did," Hugo reminded her. "And like as not still ended with you running the household. But never say he declared himself before me; now who's been keeping secrets?"

He looked rather more intrigued than offended; a man determined to find good fortune wherever he looked, and therefore very often finding it, her Hugo. Well, perhaps not _only_ hers; but he had such a way of making the familiar seem delightfully otherwise, and the most impossible things not only possible, but achievable. The whole of the moon and the stars for good measure, indeed.

"Not in so many words; and _because_ of how well I took the order," she countered, leaning up for another laughing kiss. "And look how that has turned out."

Hugo carefully kept her at arm's length, trying to avoid dirtying her dress as they furthered their acquaintance.

"You know, he asked me once, how you had all contrived to rub along without me before I came?" Hugo mused, after a long moment. "I rather think it was the other way round." 

Anthea might have been mewed up in Darracott Place for most of her twenty-two years, and halfway to being on the shelf after only one unsuccessful season in London; but she had seen enough of society to agree with Vincent.

She was not at all inclined to argue the matter of who was the luckiest among them, though – well, at least not in so detached a medium as _words_.

Whatever happened next, she was certain her future would be filled with delight.


End file.
